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Learning Democratic Values
As the summer of 1970 drew to a close, we organized a march to Raleigh for the purpose of drawing attention to highway litter by collecting trash along the roadside. A dozen or more students participated in this event, and several young African Americans joined in. After a day of hard labor in the hot August sun we all slept soundly on cots in the National Guard Armory in Clinton. I recall that next to me on one side was a beautiful girl named Betsy, and on the other, a bright, tall and articulate Black youth named Carl, who lived in the projects. Carl’s ribald sense of humor and enthusiastic laughter caught on quickly with our group. He was very well liked and talked about the ghetto and the problems of the Black community in a calm, soft-spoken voice that made most of us willing to listen. Betsy, an intense young woman with a brilliant smile, had serious ideas about the preservation of nature. The Wilmington mayor, Luther Cromartie, who believed strongly in WYC, supported our mission by supplying transportation from his trucking firm, along with plastic bags, cots and other materials donated by various groups. It must have presented a shocking new image for the city of Wilmington and North Carolina to behold such an assemblage trooping into the capital in the summer of 1970. But we did just that the next day. Our protest was all in good fun, and though we had left some trash yet along the roadside in our haste, no one seemed to hold it against us. As we filed across the capital grounds, our hearts pounded loud enough for the press and everyone else to hear. We filed up into the governor's office for a meeting pre arranged, entering an office arrayed with studio lights, with the governor's employees looking on as our drama unfolded. Cameras whirring, flashbulbs popping, we each shook hands with Governor Robert Scott, who managed somehow to tower above his desk. A smiling presence, perfectly delighted with the occasion even as we lapsed into scolding declarations, the Governor expressed willingness to promote a wider effort to clean up North Carolina roadsides. And as we later learned, news clips of our march were aired on TV news programs in the state capital, in Wilmington, and perhaps elsewhere. Our March for Clean Highways brought many people together in a way that cheerfully addressed a major problem and aroused public debate. Such protests had been a major tactic used in the civil rights struggle, an event so crucial that, literally, our project could never have occurred without it. Without the power of Black ballots, the liberal city government of Mayor Cromartie could never have existed. And in the absence of the cautious steps toward integration undertaken by the city and the schools, racially integrated groups such as WYC could never have existed. The spirit of active citizenship and grass roots democracy that was taught so effectively by example through the actions of our group depended almost totally on the resolve, the participation and the support of both races acting together. Our group that year went on to accomplish much that was worthwhile for Wilmington and North Carolina. But the group also had its failures and shortcomings. The young woman named Betsy established a committee on the environment, which sought to organize a campaign to protect coastal islands from over development. Eventually the group drafted a petition and signed letters protesting the plan for the suburbanization of Bald Head Island. But this effort never went far. Young Blacks who were embittered about conditions in the public schools talked about the issues on the edges of our group, but did not select WYC as a forum through which to express their grievances. And crucial as the issue was to all of us, our group never once managed to debate or seriously discuss the Vietnam War, though we did talk about it informally among ourselves. Meanwhile—the closing of minimally desegregated Williston Senior High set off an explosion in Black Wilmington, as this institution served as a bedrock of support for the community. From young Blacks such as Carl, from Robert Nichols, the Human Relations Director—I would learn much about the problems of the city and the deep divisions among African Americans over issues of culture, education and community. Troubled waters for Wilmington and for North Carolina remained on the horizon, and before it was over, the stain of violence, racism, chaotic discord, and extremism would see the fragile chords of democracy frayed to the point of rupture. But through the support and actions of WYC our group would make a significant contribution to the resolution of the crisis. What did I learn from my youth council days? Well, maybe Robert’s Rules were not so important. I could live without the experience of working the polls, pouring over by-laws, or seeing my name in the morning paper. Even the thrill of making the six o’clock news passed quickly, though the highways did seem cleaner somehow through later years. WYC presented an opportunity for young people to involve themselves constructively in the life of the community through a process that sustained and furthered the cause of democracy. Like the Peace Corp, the Commissions on Women, the Bi-Racial Councils, and so many other instances of social activism in the 1960s, it enabled citizens from diverse origins to experience the reality of government in a way that was a discernable echo of the vision of the founding generation. Shorn of the contradictions, taboos, and limitations of Southern conservatism and US Cold War excesses, youth council as an expression of the Sixties outlook became a reflection of Middle America—both of its strengths as well as its weaknesses. It was an idealistic age in which youth culture held a major place of influence, one that has been too often lost for subsequent generations fed alternately on the rhetoric of deception, fear or extremism. Yet, most young people who belonged to it were probably more like the members of WYC than the tainted image of Sixties youth has been held to allow. Alas, our experience and the service rendered to the community will never fair well by comparison to the heroism of America’s soldiers in the Second World War. Certainly those of our generation who dared to protest the war in Vietnam at times showed a level of courage and patriotism that was virtually equivalent—for they risked their lives and in a few cases even sacrificed their lives for the love their country. The cheeky, cabbage patch idealism expressed so well among the high schoolers of our day might well have been bottled up and sold in the legislatures, the national councils and the daily news bureaus, where decisions are made the world over. Being freer than our parents from the myths of history, from social prejudice, or the attachments and encumbrances of established interests, the WYC often looked at problems with a greater sincerity of regard for the public welfare. It seemed that our generation came to understand that if a young man at the age of eighteen is qualified to be drafted and sent to fight in his country’s wars, then young high schoolers our age were also qualified to speak out and participate in the governing of society. Our seemingly small voice was actually a gigantic one, because it often spoke the truth when members of “the greatest generation” remained stolidly silent. The founders who created the United States through the ordeal of revolution understood that a vital relationship between education and democracy formed the essential mortar on which the American form of government depends. In later years I was always grateful that I’d had the opportunity to participate in WYC and to serve the city of Wilmington. The social bond and civic identity created as a result, for me as for so many others involved in the youth council movement, had helped to light the torch of liberty. It was an education worth receiving.
John L. Godwin is editor and publisher of Carolina Civic Voice. |
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Carolina Civic Voice Winter 2006-07 Vol. 6, No 4 |